Der Mensch
by Mirrordance
Summary: Weiß will take any chance they could to get their fallen teammate back. Kritiker gives them an option they couldn’t refuse. But when Ken finally returns, he isn’t who he used to be...


Author: Mirrordance  
  
E-mail: mirror_dance@hotmail.com  
  
Title: Der Mensch ("Human Being")  
  
Warnings: yaoi, severe language, violence, angst, death  
  
Spoilers: set during the series, but no spoilers that I could recall  
  
Teaser: Weiß will take any chance they could to get their fallen teammate back. Kritiker gives them an option they couldn't refuse. But when Ken finally returns, he isn't who he used to be.  
  
Keywords: Ran/Ken, Weiß, angst  
  
"Der Mensch"  
  
A WKff by Mirrordance  
  
don't own anybody.  
  
Ran's P.O.V. .  
  
I watched him for a little while.  
A lot of scenes had unfolded here, where the sounds from the city below had dulled into a distant reality, where the night was strong and solitary, where the wind blew, and dreams and thoughts flew, and it was almost as if one could touch the stars.  
"Don't keep standing in the dark like that," he told me quietly, turning his face just so, smiling a little. He sat on the railing of the shop building roof, legs dangling.  
I held my ground. As usual, he was beautiful in the moonlight. His eyes glowed now, unlike in the day when his face was red with the sun and his eyes glistened instead. Anyone could get lost in those lonely pools. Like the deepest, stillest water.  
He shrugged off the fact that I refused to respond. "That's all right. I'll be out of here in a sec. I know you wouldn't want to be disturbed."  
The roof was like a refuge to us all, at one time or another. But I didn't come up here to be alone. I had come looking for him.  
"It's dinner time," I said to him.  
"Oh," he smiled, "Thank you. Yoji didn't try to cook, did he?"  
"He did."  
"I guess I would want to be a little late," he said with an easy laugh, "So there would be less for me."  
--  
"You think," he continued with a smile, "You think he is being awful deliberately? No one could be that bad. He's trying to repulse us into excusing him from the chore."  
--  
"Nothing was burnt this time." I informed him.  
He smirked. Paused. Was waiting for me to leave, assuming that I had already told him what I needed to.  
"What's wrong?" he asked, worry creasing his forehead. I looked away from him. With you? Nothing. With me? That's a different story altogether.  
I looked back at him, and he was still waiting expectantly. This is ridiculous. You think by now he'd learn. There is no answer forthcoming. But Ken seldom learned. Impulsive as hell. Borne of great passions. Great anger, great grief, great everything. When he was mad, his fists clenched and his eyes burned. When he was happy, even his eyes smiled. When he cried, it was as if the world ended. He felt everything and he felt so strongly. He was so warm. so alive.  
"Why do you come up here?" I found myself asking.  
His brows raised, surprised at my interest. Up to now, it still surprised them that I gave a damn. I ought to be insulted. And yet I could not blame them for the distance I brought between us. Distance was simpler.  
"Why do you ask?" he asked me back.  
--  
He rolled his eyes at me. But his lips had curved a bit, and every nuance of his face told me that he thought I was being Typical.  
Ken shrugged. "Same as you, I guess. To think about life in general. How we've all been suckered into this goddamn mess. I think about a lot of things. Other times, I go to think about not thinking about anything at all."  
That last part made me smirk somewhat. Which I felt he may not have seen at all, but he did, and he smiled. It warmed my heart.  
"Is that a smile there?" he asked delightedly, "Well! You make me feel like the king of the world."  
I shook my head and looked away from him, towards the horizon. He thought that any smile of mine is so rare it's like a prize. But why does each and every one of his always make me feel as if I'm the one who had won something?  
"Now," he said to me, "Why do you ask?"  
I wondered about that myself. It might have been that I was genuinely curious. It might have been that I was trying to say something else. It might have been that I was trying to keep myself from saying something else. It might have been. a lot of things. I had looked at how the wind played with his hair, and I lost my thread of thought.  
"Ran." his voice grated, and I could feel him trying to curb his impatient tongue.  
"I'm sorry," I murmured.  
"For what?" he asked, exasperated, running his beautiful, able hands through his hair, "What the hell for? Don't say sorry unless you mean it."  
"I'm sorry." I repeated.  
He closed his eyes. Shook his head. His face softened. "I don't know what came over me," he laughed, "I'm as frustrated at you as I am with myself."  
I felt my brows raise.  
"No, no," he said with another laugh, "you're not weaseling it out of me. Now there are things we know. And there are things that need saying. And there are things I need to hear from you."  
I knew what he meant. I loved him. Not as a man to woman. Not as a man to a man. But in its truest way. I never even thought of my love for him as wrong, or shameful. It skipped the body and went straight from and for the soul. In battle, that would be like going straight for the guttural. It's a bloody mess and it is fatal as hell. But I couldn't say it. To say it would leave it hanging in the air, concrete and undeniable. Unsaid like this, if-no, WHEN it passes, I could just deny it. Distance is simpler. And yet.  
He swung his legs over the rail and landed on his light feet.  
"You know," he said to me as he walked closer, "for a bunch of assassins, we sure keep our words as if we would live forever."  
I held my ground and he walked past me, towards the door. I grabbed him by the arm, let my hand stay a little longer, then haltingly pulled it away. I watched as his hand fell towards the part of his skin that I had touched, as if I burned him. His eyes were looking straight through me, peering inside in places where I refused to be seen.  
"Wait," I said to him, "Please. We're not done talking."  
"We're never done talking," he said, "Maybe I'll catch this dance tomorrow." He smiled a little at me, though his eyes were filled with a regret that made my heart shatter. He nodded and left.  
The wind blew. And dreams and thoughts flew.  
And chances. here, in many nameless nights like this, chances were lost in that wind too.  
  
The last time I would see him alive was when Kritiker took him away from us in an unmarked ambulance. His face had been the pallor of death, and I knew he was gone, or headed that way quickly.  
About an hour before that had been the last time his eyes met mine. He gave me a determined nod just before Weiß split up for the completion of our mission.  
The last time I saw him move was when I saw the fingers of his beautiful, able hands twitch spasmodically the first time I saw him laid out on the ground with a sizeable part of his brains blown out.  
I sat up on the roof, where he sat just last night. With all the blood in my clothes from tonight's mission. Some of the blood was dirty nuisance, mere stains. Some of the blood was his and I loathed to wash them away. I detested the idea of having to rid myself of the only part of him that remained solely mine. His blood on my clothes.  
My heart ached. But how could something already shattered know to hurt so much? How had Ken Hidaka snuck his way inside, when I had closed myself up. Distance. distance had always been simpler. And yet he drew me into himself, and now that he was dead, I felt dead too.  
All the things that I should have said, all those chances in all those nights that I caught him here. all that time. and all of those useless words that should have been breath for the more important things.  
"He always sat right there."  
I didn't need to turn to know it was Yoji. I could smell the tobacco. He reeked of it, more tonight than ever. How did he know where Ken sat? Would Yoji rob me of those moments here that I thought was rare and just between Ken and me? And yet I could not bring myself to be selfish. Who would not want a share of that moonlight sight. Even Death wanted a piece, and he's damn selfish. He took it all now, forever, when he took Ken.  
He walked towards me, leaned on the railing I sat on. His eyes were trying to reach mine, as he read my face.  
"You look shell-shocked," he commented coolly, tossing over a burnt- out cigarette butt down into the streets below.  
"You gotta be realistic, Ran," he said, "I'm sure you found it to your great dismay that you couldn't control everything in life. Shit happens. The Klutz had to go. It was his time. We all will, in the end."  
I shook my head. This couldn't be true. Yoji wouldn't just dismiss Ken's death as One Of Those Things. Just another mystery in a world full of mysteries. Just another piece of shit in a world chock-full of it. No. It felt too great.  
"That's frigid," I told him.  
"Well you ought to know," he pointed out, "Let's say I'm employing the Great Fujimiya Approach to Life, Love and Death. It's a bestseller."  
I turned to him hotly, "I don't see the point of you bothering me like this."  
"I guess," he said wryly, and underneath all the hostility were the unshed tears in his eyes, "I couldn't help but want to sock it to you all the time you wasted being such a cold son-of-a-bitch."  
"I don't need anyone to have to tell me that," I snapped.  
He leaned heavily against the railing and looked straight down. "Isn't regret a bitch?"  
I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled his mocking face close to mine. "Enough of this."  
"Or what?" he laughed bitterly, "You look like you're going to throw me over. Have I said anything that isn't true? Have I said anything that you haven't been thinking?"  
I pushed him away from me. This was fucking useless.  
--  
"You loved him, didn't you?" he asked me.  
--  
"And he loved you right back," he said stonily, "it was a ridiculous comedy. Attack and parry, show and hide, hit and dodge. I can't remember how it began. And then it never ended. And now he's dead. What a goddamn waste of time."  
"I know all this," I told him, curbing my murderous rage.  
He stared at me, then nodded as if he had made a decision. He turned away and left.  
I looked straight down at the streets below. My vision blurred. I shook with the strain of keeping all my tears, of missing all of my chances, of losing all of my hope.  
  
The days went by agonizingly slowly. Kritiker gave us room to breathe, just when I wanted it least. I needed the job they would give me. any goddamn job. I needed a direction. I needed a distraction. I needed a specific, short-term goal. It would be highly satisfying to plunge a blade into some bastard who achingly deserved it. But here I am, aimless.  
I needed someone to blame for Ken's death. I needed a Battle cry. There had always been a specific villain to blame for all the bullshit, a kind of.Cause. Some time ago in my life, that niche had been filled by Taketori. And he filled it well. It was a bitch to take him down, needing all my attention, all my resourcefulness. But whoever had killed Ken was dead now, and it hadn't been hard at all to kill them. I had nothing to pour all my determination and anger toward. It felt so empty. He was just dead. I couldn't blame anyone anymore. I couldn't take it personally. I couldn't create a nemesis. I had no one specifically to fight. What I would do now is just up to me. And it hurt like hell to not know what to do, to not want to do anything.  
More and more nights I found myself on the roof, sitting where he sat, 'thinking about life in general, how we all got suckered into this goddamn mess, to think about not thinking about anything at all.' and I would think of him, and his smile, and the moon on his skin and his eyes. How cold and silver the moon seemed now. brutally cold. Ken was like the sun. He gave the moon, the night, me. his light and warmth. He had shared his life.  
I sat there for awhile, absently.  
The only thing that caught my attention enough to realize that I've been thinking nothing for quite some time was when I heard the dim sounds of an argument downstairs.  
Omi doesn't argue. Yoji would. Ken would. But Ken was dead. There was someone else in the shop, unless Kudou completely lost his mind and was arguing with himself.  
Whatever it is, it isn't my problem.  
- - Or is it.?  
I swung my dangling legs over and landed on my feet on the ground. As I went down the stairs to the floors below, the argument picked up, and I could hear Manx. She and Yoji were on the living quarters on the floor directly above the flower shop.  
I stopped going down the stairs. I could see and hear them clearly from where I was. "Lower your voice, Balinese, he can hear you," Manx said to Yoji. He? Was she talking about me?  
I heard Yoji bark a bitter laugh, "Ha! Don't you even, Manx. Don't you even fucking pretend that he can feel anything. He can hear me and the whole world can hear me and I don't give a damn. And he won't give a damn, would he? Because he can't. Fuck you, Manx. Cunning bitch."  
"I told you it was experimental."  
"Don't start," Yoji snapped, "You knew, Manx. You knew the moment you asked me. You knew. You knew what would happen, just as you knew what my answer would be. I shouldn't even be surprised anymore. But you know what sucks even more? You knew, that even if we knew what was wrong with him, we would look at him, and we would fucking keep him. Because he still looks like Ken."  
My blood stilled. What the.?!  
"He IS Ken," Manx insisted.  
"You know he isn't," Yoji roared, "God, Manx. If you had turned Fujimiya into your little experiment, no one would even know the fucking difference. But this is Ken, Manx. This is Ken. Look me in the eye, Manx. I need you to look me in the eye and tell me, in all honesty, what you think of all this bullshit. Stop lying to me! Stop lying to yourself!"  
She looked him in the eye, defiant. But she said nothing.  
Yoji shook his head in disgust, raked his hands through his hair. "Jesus, Manx. What the fuck have we done."  
--  
"I must leave now," she said coldly, quietly.  
"Yeah, get the hell out, will 'ya?" sighed Yoji, muttering, "How the hell do I explain all this to Fujimiya."  
Manx walked towards the stairwell. She looked up and found me standing there. Her eyes glistened in defiant anger and. and what looked to be regret. She continued down the stairs. I waited a moment before I walked towards Yoji.  
"Explain what to me?" I asked him.  
He groaned. "I need a drink."  
  
"Later," I snapped, "I need a goddamn answer."  
"You have to understand, Ran." he said shakily, "I needed him back. To me. To you. Wherever. But back here. We need him. You would have done the exact same thing. But I answered the phone that day, and she asked me. But you would have done the same thing-"  
"Stop babbling," I told him, and I heard my voice shake too. I could feel his anxiety. God, what the hell is this now.  
"Ken's alive, Manx had said," My breath caught as Yoji continued, tears absently tracking down his cheeks, and he was oblivious to them, "She said his brain is dead but his body is alive. She said they could restore him to us, but it was a high-risk, experimental procedure. and I said yes. I couldn't bear to not do everything that could possibly be done. We needed him back."  
"He's alive." I murmured.  
He laughed bitterly again, "Goddamnitt, Ran. No, not really."  
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me sooner?" I asked, "Where is he? What happened? Did it work?"  
"I wanted you to know regret," he said bitterly, "how hard was it to love him? And to tell him? I did. Both. Imagine how hard it was for a hot- blooded heterosexual male like me, to not only realize it, but to actually say it? But when you know who you love, there's no fooling yourself anymore. You just know. I knew. And I told him. But he could never love me, because he's so hung up on you, and you were such a prick. He hurt behind the smile. And it hurt me to know that you held everything that I ever wanted, and you deprived yourself of it. I didn't tell you he was alive because I needed you to know regret. And knowing regret, maybe you would fix things when he came back to you, because I knew he would--he was alive, they were going to make him okay again. It would kill me to see you two together, but at least he would be happy. And now. well, he can't be happy. You're not happy. I'm not happy. No one is happy. Let's just say that life's as bitchy as Manx is."  
"Where is he?" I asked, and it dismayed me that my voice was just above a whisper.  
"Downstairs," Yoji replied, "with Omi-"  
I turned away from him and stalked towards the stairwell.  
"Ran!" he called, desperately after me, "He's not the same! I wouldn't have told Manx yes if I knew! Ran! Ran!  
"I'm sorry." he said in quiet anguish, then repeated it in a voice that boomed and sent vibrations through my heart, "I'm sorry!"  
  
I found them in the basement.  
Omi was sitting next to Ken on the couch, who was wearing a baseball cap and jeans and a dark jacket. Omi was watching him intently, and Ken just sat there, looking. blank.  
God.  
This wasn't him.  
I now knew what Yoji meant when he said to Manx that there was 'something wrong with him.' At one glance, I knew. I knew. that he wasn't in there anymore. There was no warmth in his eyes. No life. And how could this. this man be him when he didn't have Ken's passions?  
'Ken' blinked and looked at me. It was so disconcerting. I could not bring myself to come any closer. His lips curved to a smile, but his eyes. he isn't there.  
"Ran," he said.  
Omi looked up at me too. His eyes held a silent grief.  
"How did this happen?" I asked Omi.  
"His primary brain was the only thing left intact after his injury," he answered quietly, "His reflexes are as good as they have always been. Improved, possibly even. If you hit him, he would know to parry and fight back. If you toss him a soccer ball, he could kick it around. If you gave him flowers, he could arrange them. Muscle memory and reflexes are all right. But not judgment or creativity. If you hit him, he will hit you even if the Ken we knew would not. If you gave him a soccer ball, he could kick it around but he wouldn't know which goal to take it in. If you gave him rotten flowers, he would still arrange them. No aesthetics, no initiative."  
"But he knows me." I said.  
"They managed to retrieve most of his memories," said Omi, "they had them digitized. He could recall them on command. Like a calculator," even he winced at the crudeness of his analogy, "One plus one, automatic two. If you ask him what he did or what happened to him yesterday, he can answer you in painfully accurate detail. Like a recording machine. But he cannot feel. He can just. know."  
"Yes," agreed Ken helpfully, "To 'feel' as Omi has tried to define it earlier this evening escapes my understanding. I know it only in relation to the sense of touch. But I know a lot of things. I have an excellent memory. You can even input languages."  
Input. Into him. Like a goddamn computer.  
The world spun. This could not be happening.  
"About one week ago," I told him edgily, "We had a conversation on the roof."  
His eyes blanked for awhile. He was retrieving the data from inside his head. God.  
"I have that, yes," he replied, paused and remembered to flash a smile. It seemed that his expressions were also programmed, to give him a more human appearance. I suddenly remembered what Yoji told Manx about me. 'If you had done your experiment on Fujimiya, no one would even know the difference.'  
"What was the first thing you said to me?" I asked.  
"Don't keep standing in the dark like that," 'Ken' answered. He got the exact words, even the exact, endearing tone. This was inhuman. It made my heart sink, it made me hunger for the real Ken.  
I backed up a step. Decided this was about time to leave.  
"Wait," 'Ken' called, "Wouldn't you be interested in reading my manual?"  
I could have laughed out loud. A fucking manual. I tried to turn my back on him and Omi. And yet. I couldn't. At least not completely.  
"Omi," I said to the young blond, "Make sure he gets settled in his room."  
Yoji had been right. It was still Ken's body, Ken's face. we would still 'keep' him, despite. everything.  
  
I found Yoji on the roof with a half-empty bottle of bourbon. One thing was for sure: the bastard could drink.  
He was on his ass on the ground, in the shadows, face obscured. He looked up at me blearily.  
"You were right," I said to him, "I would have done the same. I would have told Manx to go do it. I might have even allowed it, even if I knew the consequences. You drink like a fish. It's not your damn fault."  
His eyes watered some more, but he nodded determinedly and glanced at his bottle.  
"Want some?"  
I could tell that he didn't really expect me to, but I walked towards him and took a good, solid, burning slug from the bottle.  
"Do they expect us to take him with us on missions?" asked Yoji.  
"Naturally," I replied. I could not conceive of Kritiker giving us Ken back just to have a little toy, or, say, to keep us happy. No. They created an excellent, unquestioning weapon.  
"Is he fit?"  
"In time," I replied.  
--  
"Can he still die?" Yoji asked me.  
"Only his brain is digitized," I replied edgily, "his body is still the same."  
Yes, we could lose him all over again.  
"We had better train him well."  
I nodded.  
But why did it matter? Ken was dead already anyway. This was just his body. This was. nothing, compared to the man he had been.  
"I opened the door," said Yoji, "And Manx stood there with him, and he grinned at me. But it wasn't him. I knew it that very moment."  
"I know."  
"This changes things," observed Yoji, "I loved Ken for all the life that he had. All his passions, light and dark. And now they are gone. He cannot feel. How could I still love him? And yet I do. How foolish is that? Is he even the same man? Should we be giving him a different name? It's all a big mess."  
I took another slug of the bourbon and handed it back to him.  
"Shit happens," I told him, quoting that unfeeling thing that he had said to me days ago.  
He chuckled harshly, "Don't I fucking know it."  
Silence.  
"He cannot feel," I said to Yoji after awhile, "he can just know things. He knows the how, the what. not the Why. Omi said so."  
Yoji stared at me for a moment. He knew what that meant. 'Ken' could not love. And even if he knew that he loved me before, and that I loved him, he wouldn't understand it, wouldn't know what to do with it. You can't digitize feeling. There are barely any words to embody it, let alone the numbers that ruled 'Ken's' new life and his 'memories.'  
"Just as well," Yoji said quietly as he looked away, "Because feeling can hurt like a real bitch."  
  
***  
  
"We're so glad you're feeling better, Kenken." the girls gushed, at the shop two nights after Ken had returned to us. Yoji, Omi and I wanted to watch him first before throwing him to the wolves, in case he gave himself away. I should have known the girls wouldn't be able to tell the difference though. While a lot of the women were truly kind, most of them didn't really see who we were outside of pretty faces.  
"I was not sick," Ken told them plainly, then belatedly smiled.  
The girls frowned.  
"Omi said that's why you have been away," one of them said.  
Yoji quickly came to the rescue. Kudou graced us with his presence this morning-and I bet he also will for the succeeding mornings afterward- precisely to be Ken's protector.  
"No he wasn't sick," said Yoji, looking at Ken and giving him a not- so-subtle wink, "he hit his head."  
Ken blinked at Yoji, then nodded and smiled to the girls, "Yes, I agree. I hit my head."  
It almost put a smile to my face, remembering how yesterday, when we were trying to prepare Ken for his first public appearance after his. repairs, Yoji said to him, "When I do like this," he winked, "You just agree with me, okay?"  
Ken was looking at him with the most absorbed expression on his face and said, "When you do like this," he winked, "I will agree with you."  
"Is that why you are wearing that cap?" another girl asked.  
Now this was a memory I didn't enjoy. The first time I had seen what was underneath that baseball cap Manx made Ken wear that night she had restored him to us, it was like looking Frankenstein in the eye. They had shaved him bald to operate on him, and his head was blotchy with stitches and older scars Ken must have acquired from older missions.  
"Yes," said Yoji with a wink at Ken.  
"I agree," Ken said emphatically. The two of them looked ridiculously suspect.  
"Yoji," said one of the girls, "Do you have something in your eye?"  
Later that day, Yoji changed the code.  
  
Some days later, I would catch him sitting alone in the kitchen, and he didn't seem to know I was there behind him, and he was just unmoving, like a puppet with its strings cut off.  
"Ran," he had said at last, without even turning his head to look at me. It was a very matter-of-fact of him to say my name like that. Flat. No surprise, no delight, no dismay in seeing me. Nothing.  
The past few days had been a roller coaster of emotions. Situations had seemed so comical and yet tragic and. I had no idea how we kept our sanity. At the center of the storm was Ken, oblivious. Smiling belatedly at odd times and places. A Ken who felt nothing. And yet I was. happy? happier.? to have some part of him around.  
I held my ground. So did he. He wouldn't even turn his head to look at me.  
--  
"What are you doing here?" I asked him at last. The Ken I had known would always be the one to start the conversation. Maybe he couldn't stand the voices of his head in silence. Maybe he was just a talkative guy. Maybe a lot of things. I think it is a ridiculous, heartless joke of fate that I would be the one so unnerved by silence now. That I would be the one compelled to talk, because this walking computer chip didn't have the initiative to.  
"Omi told me to stay here and rest," he replied, "he said that I swept the floor too well."  
I winced at that. I remembered passing by the store and seeing my reflection on the floor. Whichever task he was ordered to do, he took very seriously. And he wouldn't stop until he was told to.  
I walked past him to make myself some coffee.  
"You shouldn't have to take things too literally," I advised.  
"The nuances of the language are beyond my comprehension," he said, "I am not equipped to differentiate to a figurative level."  
When he talked like that, I ached for Ken more and more. The real one. With his real words.  
"Do you want some?" I asked him.  
"I don't want."  
"You don't want coffee," I asked, "or you don't want anything?"  
"I'm not equipped to want anything."  
This is ridiculous. He was like those silly computer programs sold in the market that you could 'talk to' but they don't really say anything of importance, or depth.  
I put down my coffee cup and threw a punch his way. He caught my fist cleanly and didn't even look surprised. His other hand swung towards my face for a retaliation, but I jumped back. His hands didn't really punch squarely. He would turn his fist downward, as if he were attacking with claws at the back of his hand, rather than with his bare knuckles. Omi had been right when he said that 'Ken' was a mass of reflexes. He was punching as if he had his bugnuks on.  
"We're going to practice your skills," I said to him, "there may be a mission in a few days."  
"Okay."  
  
We made a mess in the basement.  
Ken seemed better as a fighter. Faster, cleaner. Certainly more focused. I tossed him his bugnuks and watched him slip them on absently, retracting and detracting, as if testing them. I pulled the cap from his head and tossed it to the ground, so it wouldn't get in his way. And then I told him, "Try to kill me."  
He lunged for my throat, just like that.  
I parried with my katana, and he would keep coming, with his expressionless face. It saddened me somewhat, but I concentrated on staying alive. He didn't even have the judgment not to completely kill me. He really is a machine now.  
"Stop!"  
Ken jumped away from me, and looked at Yoji, who was coming down the stairs with Omi in tow. They must have heard the commotion from upstairs.  
I straightened from my battle stance and stalked towards Yoji, "We're training. Don't interrupt." I walked back towards Ken. "Continue."  
He lunged again. It was a beautiful, lethal dance. I knew the skill had been in Ken, but before, he could never divorce his power from his passions. And his passions had been tumultuous. This Ken had no passions to confuse or hurt him.  
I attacked, he parried, he attacked, I parried. He could match every move I made, and he was never daunted or afraid or confused or angry. Ken really was dead now. And despite all the distraction that this new Ken was causing, watching him fight me like this, I'm sure Yoji and Omi were coming to the same conclusion. This was no longer Our Ken.  
I made a quick decision that I knew would mean life or death. His, mine. Literally and figuratively. I deliberately left myself open for him to kill.  
I watched his face. It was without triumph, without doubt, without any emotion, as he saw the opening and jumped and pulled his arm back to bring a killing assault to my neck.  
And then the claws stopped a hair away from my skin.  
Ken's eyes tore away from my neck and his confused stare locked on mine. I held my breath. He knew he wasn't supposed to. He felt. he felt.  
"That's enough!" hollered Yoji, stalking towards us. Ken stepped away from me, and his face turned affable and unassuming again.  
I put my katana back into its sheath. Yoji was looking at me in a really intent way. He knew what this all meant. Our Ken, he was in there, somewhere.  
I walked towards Ken.  
"Welcome back."  
If I had blinked I would have missed the return of, and subsequently, hurriedly-disposed of, confused expression on his face.  
  
It was going to rain.  
I found myself on the roof again. The wind was fast and cold, and I could smell the fresh grassy-scent of a coming storm. Yoji was here too, sitting where Ken always sat.  
"Did you really have to bring him back, Fujimiya?" he asked me, looking over his shoulder and smiling sickly.  
"I don't understand you," I told him. Isn't that what we've always wanted? To have Our Ken back? More than the expressionless face, more than the computer chip, the one with passions?  
He laughed bitterly, "That's all right. I mean if I don't understand me either, who else can, eh?"  
I stood there, watched him struggle with the things he didn't want to say, but I felt that he needed me to know.  
"You always gotta be one step ahead of me, dontcha?" he asked me harshly, and his eyes were afire, and I felt that he hated me, as he looked at me.  
--  
He rolled his eyes at what I assumed he thought of as my ignorance.  
"I thought about it, and having Ken like he is now, it's just like a fresh start," he said, "he could actually start loving me instead of you. I could teach him how. But now you're reminding him of how things used to be. Reminding him that he should be loving you instead. And that's not fair, Ran. This is a new Ken. This one is fair game."  
"You're sick, Kudou," I told him, "Ken is not a game."  
Yoji shrugged, "If you just wanted a machine to fuck, Fujimiya, they have all sorts of contraptions at this store in town-"  
I rammed my fist to his face. In my rage I forgot that he was sitting on a goddamn ledge. The force of the hit almost sent him flying, except I got hold of my senses and grabbed his arm, as he dangled over the city below.  
Yoji looked up at me with watery eyes, laughing and crying in his madness, his torn grin bloody from my fist. He wasn't even hanging on to me, or trying to get back up.  
"You've lost your mind!" I yelled at him, as I tried to pull him to safety.  
"Excuse me," he drawled, "but you're the psycho who did the decking, Fujimiya, not me."  
"What you said had been uncalled for," I grunted as I pulled him up, "pull your own ass up, will you?"  
"All this for a man," Yoji sighed melodramatically, finally deciding to carry his weight. I breathed relief when at last his feet touched solid ground.  
He crumpled to his ass on the ground as he laughed. It was a harsh laugh, full of irony in this tragicomedy of a life.  
"All this for a man," he said again as he caught his breath, "I want to hate you, Ran. But I can't. How can I blame you for loving Ken when we're both just suckered into this? I can't hate you because you're just like me. If we could avoid all this love bullshit, we would. If I could keep myself from loving a man, for god's sake, I would. But we just can't help ourselves, could we?"  
The first raindrops fell over us. I stood there, looming over Yoji. He was right. You can't choose to love or not love, or precisely who to love. It just happened.  
"It just happens," I said, offering him a hand to help him up.  
"Like shit," Yoji growled, taking my hand and getting to his feet as he alluded to an older conversation between us. Shit happens.  
  
Part of Manx's expansive job description (secretary, covert ops personnel, messenger, tactician, etc.) is, undoubtedly, that she complicates our lives.  
Just as I'm trying to keep an eye on an unstable Yoji, and a Ken who is starting to realize that he knows how to feel, and trying to keep tabs on my own emotions, she shows up with a mission.  
After the usual briefing, she pulled me aside. I found the deed pretentious; it was obvious to everyone what it was she wanted to ask.  
"Can Weiß do this?"  
I looked at Yoji, leaning against the wall and flashing me a demented grin. Ken was seated, looking at Manx and I earnestly. Omi was beside him, looking. well, looking like he always did. and that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Omi could keep his fears and doubts with the best of them. And as for myself. I fared no better. This was potentially going to be a massacre, with our frame of mind.  
"When did we ever let anything stop us?" I asked her back.  
  
I paused by the door of his room and watched as he read what looked to be a paperback book. He seemed not to notice the fact that the room was not lit, and the sun had already set quite some time ago.  
"You'll ruin your eyes," I told him, flipping on the switch next to the door ledge.  
He looked up at me. "No, not really. My vision had been enhanced, along with most of my senses." He raised up the book he was reading, which I now guessed was his goddamn manual, "It is all in here, should it interest you."  
--  
"I just went here to tell you to leave your cap behind during the mission," I told him, "It will only get in your way."  
"Of course," he said, taking it from his head and putting it neatly on top of the bed, beside his hip. He resumed reading as if I had already left.  
I took a deep breath and began to turn on my heel, except. except I couldn't leave things as they were. Ken could feel, he was in there somewhere, I didn't need to put up with this frigid bullshit. Funny, he must have thought the same about me, back when he was the one who was passionate, and I the one who was cold. Life had played a trick on me, reversing these god forsaken roles.  
I stepped inside his room and closed the door behind me. Ken looked up from the goddamn manual.  
"It interests you," he said, belatedly smiling, "I have a photographic memory now. All the mission details; maps, codes. I can relay it to you on site, on command. I can do a lot of things."  
"Are you Ken?" I asked him.  
"Yes," he answered, "that is my name."  
"Do you think you are who we all say you are?" I pressed, "or do you think you are someone else altogether?"  
He blinked at me. "I am Ken."  
"Ken is an idiot," I snapped at him, my blood starting to come to a boil-at Kritiker, at life in general, at this fraud carrying the name of the person that I loved, at myself, because we are all fools, "He can be insensitive, is definitely impulsive, and though it drives him crazy, he damn well knows how to feel. You, on the other hand, are a smart-ass. You aren't equipped to be anything but a really very expensive toy. You're not Ken. You're not anyone."  
He blinked at me. Absent tears had traced his cheeks by now, and he raised his hands up to touch them, and he looked at his wet fingers in wonder.  
"What do you feel?" I asked him, feeling desperate. You can cry. That means you can be sad. That means you can feel. That means deep inside there, you can love me again.  
He just blinked at me. Perhaps he was not fucking equipped for anger management.  
"I can't feel," he said flatly, "I can just know."  
"Look inside Ken's memories," I told him, "do you know if Ken loved me?"  
"Yes, I know."  
"Did he?"  
"Yes."  
"What does it mean to love?" I asked him.  
"It's deep caring, deep affection," he answered.  
"How does one differentiate the love for a mother and that for a mate?" I pressed him.  
"Some philosophers would argue that there is just one kind," he said, "but most do not agree."  
"Do you agree?"  
"Most do not agree."  
"Does that include you?"  
"I'm not equipped to answer with that brand of judgment," he admitted. I watched his face, and though his voice was flat, he looked agitated, as if he was trying to find words, where there were none. None inside his head. Because there was none that Kritiker or anyone had input there. He was starting to realize he had this massive black hole in his mind, maybe in his soul.  
Just as I was starting to realize that this was not Our Ken. He could feel, but he could not feel the same way Ken had. I could not delude myself anymore. This Ken may have Our Ken's memories, he may have his body, but this was a different person. But a person, nonetheless.  
The realization that I had truly lost Ken was a dull aching in my heart. He would not return. This was a different person.  
I decided to back off, now. This new Ken is starting to seriously question his humanity. And that is good. It was a solid step, into becoming the person that he truly could be. But I think I went here and pushed him because I needed to know who he was too, maybe almost as much as he needed to know himself.  
He was looking at his tears in astonishment again. I turned toward the door, paused just long enough from my exit to turn the knob, when he asked,  
"Am I much like he was?"  
His perception surprised me. At least he now recognized that he was a separate person from the Ken I had lost, he can have a life of his own, an identity of his own.  
"You don't have to be," I said to him, and said it to myself.  
  
The roof.  
I sat where he usually sat, and I let myself cry the way he usually cried. As if the world had ended.  
It was all at once grief, all at once release. I couldn't understand myself.  
"This is like watching an ice sculpture melt."  
Yoji. I refused to face him. This was embarrassing enough without him having to see my face.  
"You spare your tears," he said, his voice filled with underlying tenderness, "like you were afraid they would finish you. Like an ice sculpture."  
I ran my hands over my face, struggled to compose myself.  
"What were you thinking about, up here?" he asked.  
I nearly told him what Ken told me. To think about life in general. How we've all been suckered into this goddamn mess. I think about a lot of things. Other times, I go to think about not thinking about anything at all.  
--  
"Ken, of course," he said, "I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that."  
--  
"He really is dead," I said to Yoji.  
--  
"If I didn't see you." I felt him edit out the word 'crying,' ". here, I would have insisted you were lying. That he was downstairs, and that he could feel. I believe you truly believe that."  
"The man downstairs," I said to Yoji, "he is different."  
"Maybe all he needs is time," said Yoji.  
"He needs a goddamn heart," I said.  
"Well there is something wrong with him." Yoji conceded.  
"There's nothing wrong," I told him, "Just something different. It's not the same man we knew. And it's never going to be, even if he could learn to feel, or think on his own. Ken is dead. He doesn't live in the man downstairs."  
--  
"That's all right," Yoji said quietly, "You know.? It's better than not having any part of Ken around at all."  
I glanced at him over my shoulder, then nodded.  
"Do you remember the last thing you had said to him when he was alive?" I asked.  
"Yes," he replied, "Over the comm.. He was having trouble, right? I told him, Siberian, I'm coming."  
"Outside of a mission?"  
"I told him to clean up his room," Yoji said with a little smile, "It's funny how I could remember so quickly. It's the little things, in the end, isn't it?"  
"You know what I told him last?" I asked, "I told him that we weren't done talking. And he said we were never done talking. But I guess I can say it's all done now."  
--  
"You have to know one thing, though," Yoji said to me, "I asked this new Ken because I had to know too. I told him to look into the memories, if Ken ever knew that you loved him back. And he said yes. At least he knew, Ran."  
"Yes," I agreed, "but I wish I had said so."  
"There's still this new Ken," said Yoji, his tone lightening, "and the rest of us, to try practicing being a person with, Fujimiya. I mean, man, you are a piece of work."  
I smirked a little at him.  
He grinned back.  
Regret really is a bitch. But there's more to regret if I don't start making sure that all I need or want to say will be said. And there will always be things that need saying, as long as there are people to talk to.  
"We have to get ready for the mission now," said Yoji, checking his watch.  
"Yes," I agreed, "Thanks."  
But it had been gratefulness for far more than telling me the time.  
  
THE END June 3, 2003 


End file.
